


And The Sandwich Played On

by PatchesIsSorry



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Good Sibling Vanya Hargreeves, No Incest, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, POV Vanya Hargreeves, Peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches, Post-Season/Series 01, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Vanya Hargreeves-centric, no beta we die like ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:08:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25513312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatchesIsSorry/pseuds/PatchesIsSorry
Summary: Vanya Hargreeves never really stopped making sandwiches for her missing brother, even when he wasn't missing anymore.Five never really stopped blinking into rooms unannounced.It's the middle of the night and the two Hargreeves siblings are faced with their greatest enemy: actual feelings.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 11
Kudos: 340





	And The Sandwich Played On

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this randomly last week and was kind of puttering around with it, then I remembered that season two was coming out on the thirty first and here I am.  
> Everyone enjoy six(ish) days where this isn't a complete au.  
> Also everyone collectively boo and hiss my regular beta, he hasn't seen all of season one so this is unbeta'd and he should feel wildly ashamed of himself.  
> Blame my beta for everything wrong with this, especially my inability to spell Allison either right or consistently.   
> (Yes the title is a really horrible joke only tangentially related to anything and I have no regrets.)

It was habit at this point.  
A long time ago when she made an abortive attempt at therapy after she wrote her book her therapist called it a coping mechanism.  
A ritual, a way to mourn, a remembrance.  
When life got too hard, the loneliness seeped into her very being, she would miss her family.  
Miss the one person who tried to include her, listened to her play and didn’t complain.

When he disappeared, the last semblance of them being a family went along with him.

It was just her, everyone had someone except ordinary little Vanya.

But he was still her person, Luther had Alison, Diego had mom, Klaus had Ben, until he didn’t, (or maybe he did? There was a flash of blue during the concert, but she was otherwise occupied at the time), Vanya however, had Five.

She didn’t want him to think they’d forgotten him, she could never forget him.

So years later, in between the numbness, Mrs Kowalski and her cat, and tuneless violins, she would still make sandwiches from time to time.

Leaving them on her fire escape so Mrs Kowalski’s cat would step on it instead of Pogo, near the little seven and umbrella she put on the wall when she moved in.

Even now, months after the end of the world that wasn’t, or rather the end of the world that won’t be, in their secluded little cabin after yet another day of arguments, she finds herself in yet another kitchen in the middle of the night.

The peanut butter isn’t the right kind, (Five never liked the chunky kind but it’s Klaus’s preference for withdrawal so it’s what they have), the marshmallows aren’t the right size, the bread is some kind of whole wheat bran because Alison threw a fit about eating healthier, and her brother is a floor above her probably working on more calculations not somewhere lost in time.

The routine still helps though, come to think of it it was probably the only thing she did her old therapist did approve of.

She used to hum when she made them, but given recent events silence seems like the best policy, she doesn’t want to wake anyone up anyway and the cabin isn’t as lofty and silent as the academy was.

No, she can hear everything, Alison smoking out her bedroom window (like they don’t all know she does it) while talking to Luther about her daughter in a soft voice, Klaus with a walkman he got from who knows where chattering excitedly to Ben about anything and everything, Diego doing target practice and damaging the walls, (he’ll be yelled at about it yet again in the morning), and even Five’s little mumbles and the scratching sound of him writing on the walls, (an apocalypse habit he hasn’t been able to kick and no one’s had the heart to yell at him about yet).

The sounds are comforting like the sandwich making.

There were no sandwiches in the newly remembered cell, only porridge once or twice a day, (she never really knew what time it was), there was no chatter, or house creaks, only the sound of her own panicked breathing and heartbeat, not even her own screams really made a sound, swallowed up by those awful walls.  
In the all encompassing power of the concert, of the violin she still can’t touch, she could only hear the sound of the music, feel the violin at her throat, and the power coursing through her finally more than ordinary bones.

It’s nice to make a sandwich, and hear what could almost be the sounds of an ordinary household.

Except it’s not an ordinary household, and Five blinks into the kitchen still muttering calculations and starts filling the gallon insulated water jug he insisted they get at the kitchen sink.

He notices she’s there within ten seconds of him porting in, without ever looking in her direction, he always did have the best situational awareness of them all.  
He doesn’t jump or startle when he realizes someone’s in the kitchen unexpectedly at some ungodly hour of the night, he’s too well trained for that, but for Vanya, forever little number Seven who spent her whole life watching her siblings, especially closed off Five, it’s easy to tell.

His left thumb twitches minutely, an impulse for some kind of knife or weapon, even though she’s sure he has several on his person, and a tensing of his shoulders to get ready to rip through space, a tell for his jumps Reginald always despised.

She had gotten used to him popping in and out, both before he left and now in this new odd little truce between them all, so he didn’t frighten her, but when his head starts to move, turning to look at her she has the silliest urge to hide.

Not herself, she doesn’t need to be afraid of punishments for breaking curfew anymore, but for the sandwich makings spread out on the small kitchen island.

He read her book, he’d told her that much, but they’d never talked about the sandwiches, never talked about the ache that never went away when he left, talking like that wasn’t Five’s way.

He showed his feelings in actions rather than talking, a deeply ingrained impulse to hide what he really cared about from their father.

So she knew, that the fact that he hadn’t killed her the second he found out what she was, that he always maneuvered Luther as far away from her as possible when the family was together, the theories and equations trying to figure out her powers he would talk about for hours that went over her head, they were his ways to show he cared.

But still, a couple apocalypses and over half a century later, for him, and a Five confronted by feelings was a Five gone.

She didn’t want Five to leave again, she couldn’t take it if she did.

She wasn’t sure if she could take it if he ignored the sandwiches either.

Things were odd without the medication to numb her, she missed it sometimes, everything’s so much without it, she can’t turn it off, but then she hates herself for missing it, and misses it even more as a result.

Maybe they should have brought a therapist on their little anti apocalypse family bonding boot camp adventure.

Then again maybe not, if the therapist didn’t die just from the facts of their lives she would once Diego, Luther, Five, and Klaus were done doing their own special snowflake methods of avoiding all conversations about feelings.

Not that she was much better, but her tendency to shut down and fade into the background silently was not as threatening as her darling brothers...other strategies.

Five was still frozen in one long moment, and she wasn’t the time expert here but she knew what happened next would influence a lot of things.

The next move was his, she was always more happy to let other people break silences anyway.

Five and her were a lot alike in a lot of ways.

They both watched life from the outside, for Vanya she was trapped outside a window, and for Five he was playing a game of chess, but none of their other siblings got the bone deep detachment they both had.

It wasn’t that they didn’t care or feel things, it was just different.

Five was always larger than life, larger even than Reginald, and he was always thinking.

And when they were little, he was the only one who ever really thought about her.

Five went through life like it was a chess game, and he was the only one who ever thought she was a piece.

Maybe not an important one, but one nonetheless, and through their many games she came to know just as well as he did that a pawn could be much more important than a queen.

When he went away, she hadn’t only lost him, but she lost someone to play chess with.

But she picked up new hobbies.

Mainly making sandwiches for her missing brother and playing the violin alone so much her fingers bled and Reginald locked her in her room for two days because she got it on the violin.

She never claimed they were great hobbies.

She misses her violin, she hasn’t been able to even get near it since the end of the world.

She’s only managed to gather the courage to ask about it a few times since and every time they all get flustered and make up rather horrible lies like they’re trying to be subtle.

It’s probably for the best, she has trouble enough controlling her powers with the little noises they’ve been using, clocks, quiet rhythms, and heartbeats, are more than enough for now.

Doesn’t stop her from missing it though.

The violin was the one thing she had for so long, the one thing she didn’t need anyone or anything else for except herself and it.  
When she played, she was special not just because of chance, but because of her.

No matter what, it was her who had control over it.

Now it’s been irrevocably tainted by her powers, by the apocalypse, by Leonard, by Allison’s blood on the bow, and she has nothing but sandwiches.

That too could be taken away.

The others past snide remarks about it bothered her of course, but if Five does something like that, in his condescending way that hasn’t changed even after all this time, it will destroy it.

This is everything she ever wanted and it aches.

She is little number Seven, she loves her family, even if they don’t love her, she plays the violin, she takes her pills, she is ordinary, and she makes sandwiches for her missing brother.

It wasn’t a great identity, she wasn’t happy, but she had it, bit by bit that has been broken down and no one gets it.

Five turns slowly like he’s trying not to frighten a wild animal, and looks at her, peanut butter covered knife in one hand, bread in the other, taking it all in in a second.

Something flashes in his eyes, too quick to identify, and there’s the slightest hitch in her breath she only notices because of her powers.

Maybe he could get it.

From what she can tell he’s had a lot of change in his life too.

Number Five: the Boy, of the Umbrella Academy, the stranded time traveler, lone survivor of the apocalypse desperate for his family, the assassin, never stopping moving, never stopping calculating, biding his time, lying in wait.

If it had been her, doing any of that she would have given up, lain down and died.

When it was her, discovering her powers and having feelings like a normal person, she lost it and blew up the moon.

She’s not ordinary, but she’s not great either.

She’s not anything.

That’s the problem.

“Mind if I have one? They don’t turn out right when I make them.”

These sandwiches are a monstrosity, even by peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich standards, and Five always was picky about how they were made.

They look terrible, and they probably taste even worse.

She hands him a sandwich.

It’s a gesture, not a culinary evaluation. One of the nice things Five has learned to separate in his absence that he couldn’t before.

Besides, he ate roaches, if he complains that’s his problem.

A nice thing Vanya has learned since the absence of Reginald and his pills.

He turns off the water, which has started overflowing into the sink without Vanya noticing at all, then takes a bite of the sandwich, an almost imperceptible odd look on his face as he does so.

He chews slowly and thoughtfully, blinks into sitting on the counter in front of her, narrowly avoiding landing on a pile of terrible sandwiches, and smiles, the smug, secret, lopsided one she’s missed so much.

It always made her feel like she was in on a private joke that no one else could understand.

For someone who was in on nothing, it was the greatest gift she ever received.

“This is terrible.”

The smile widens as he says it, a full cheshire cat grin she hasn’t seen since their last night at Gritty’s.

Somehow, it doesn’t feel like he’s making fun of her the same way the others did when they inevitably found her one night.

It’s just another shared joke.

So she smiles.

It’s not the same small grimaces she used to do, or the devilish grin of Five, it’s small and shy, but it’s hers.

“You’re the one who went shopping.”

He and Alison, it had made sense at the time.

It had made significantly less sense when they arrived back with the groceries.

An odd combination of junk food she would have expected from Klaus, some disgusting health food, and an odd assortment of apocalypse chic canned foods and accessories.

Vanya being the only member of the family who can cook even a little and has been cooking all the meals, has been having a little trouble.

Last night’s bean soup with alfalfa sprouts and potato chip croutons was not the greatest meal she’s ever had.

Next time she’s going to supervise shopping.

He nudges her with his knee playfully, more playful than they ever got to be as children, and takes a large bite of the sandwich.

“If it’s so terrible you don’t have to eat it.”

He rolls his eyes and takes another big bite, maintaining eye contact as he chews slowly.

It’s been so long since she’s gotten to talk to Five this way, if ever, she kind of wants to cry.

Everyone’s trying, after they got here there were tearful (Alison and Vanya) apologies (everyone after a hard glare from Alison) all around and everyone’s been nice to her since.

But everyone’s been distracted by one thing or another and it’s awkward trying to get to know your estranged siblings, especially after she ended the world.

They all seem to think if they don’t pass the salt fast enough she’ll have another cataclysmic meltdown.

It’s a little offensive, but probably warranted.

Not Five though, he hasn’t been around enough for that, always blinking off to do more equations, or whatever it is he does.

This is the longest she’s spent with him alone since he came to her apartment the first night he was back.

It’s strange, and heartbreakingly familiar.

He’s finished chewing by now, and he looks at her, a pensive expression on his face that shows his true age.

“I shouldn’t have called you ordinary. That wasn’t why I came. I also didn’t come because you listen, although you do. I came because I missed you.”

Then he blinks away in a flash of blue.

This is the most she’s heard Five talk about feelings in her entire life.

Even when the world was ending he was his usual pragmatic abrasive self.

Untouchable number Five.

She feels something tight and coiled in her chest that’s been with her so long she thought it was a part of her, untwist.

Her brother is home.  
He knows she hadn’t forgotten him.

It’s not perfect, they all have the collective emotional intelligence of a pencil, and there’s a reason they’re all up in the middle of the night and it’s not pretty.

But he took an extra sandwich with him as he went.

She finishes the last sandwich and grabs it as she heads into her room, (she’ll clean up in the morning) taking a bite absentmindedly as the sounds of her family filter through her.

It really is terrible.

The consistency is off, the peanut butter’s too salty and the chunks hurt her gums, the bread tastes like the protein shakes Diego drinks obsessively and it sticks to the roof of her mouth like cement, the marshmallows are unevenly distributed and come in short strange bursts only to join the heavy lump of cement with peanut butter spikes at the roof of her mouth.

It’s disgusting.

She can hear Five eating it as she passes.

She is Vanya, she loves her family, and they love her even though it’s complicated, she doesn’t need the violin to make music, she is extraordinary, and she makes sandwiches for her brother to remind him she never forgot.

Tomorrow is another day, and she thinks she’ll try doing a little more acting instead of reacting.

She’ll still make sandwiches, it’s a nice ritual, but maybe she doesn’t have to be alone when she does it anymore.

There’s a whole house full of super-powered people here.

Surely between all of them they can make a decent sandwich.  
Maybe even some other food.

Really, how many Hargreeves does it take to make a decent lunch?

Who knows, they’ve never really tried.

Guess she’ll have to find out.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted them to like have a late night heart to heart about feelings, but every time I tried to write anything remotely resembling that it came off really ooc because (as mentioned above) they have the collected emotional intelligence of a pencil.  
> So this little emotionally stunted almost conversation but not really, happened instead.


End file.
